now at 26, realising I haven’t learnt much of use
to me, to the world, to people now or people to come
realising that all I’ve done is empty my easily emptied head
all the maths and history is history
all the physics and geography is … history, too.
all the words and sentences are … history,
history of throwing away all that was given to me
without even looking at it!
sometimes, if I sit really still,
and I sit still a lot, now,
I can hear the thwock, thwock, thwock
of two lone braincells, bouncing my one and only
good thought back and forth
in the murmur of their muted conversation
I hear them talk about their lost friends
and then I feel sad and guilty
because their friends weren’t lost!
They didn’t just walk off with no map
or take a wrong turn in an unfamiliar place.
I hustled them out the door, threw them out of windows
machine-gunned entire cathedrals of their buddies who
were innocently praying.
poisoned wells and starved, stabbed and otherwise
annihilated in every possible way, their friends.
They sit and thwock thwock thwock the good thought
back and forth, unaware that it is the their destruction, and mine
that I have in mind.
